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Community members of Pie del Tiro in Mérida maintain a watch in their streets a day after barricades set up by opposition protesters had been cleared. “They [the protesters] rob us…they charge us a toll to cross the barricades.”

Community members of Pie del Tiro in Mérida maintain a watch in their streets a day after barricades set up by opposition protesters from another neighborhood had been cleared. “They’re [the protesters] violating our rights and have even prevented food deliveries from arriving,” one community member explains. Another man, exasperated with the protesters in his neighborhood, tells the camera: “They rob us…they charge us a toll to cross the barricades.” Throughout, the sentiment is clear: the barricades, and the violence, are unwanted.

Towards the end, shots are fired in the streets. The first woman to speak in the video, Gisela Rubilar Figueroa, would be killed the next evening by members of the opposition. Two other community members would also be wounded by gunshots from masked protesters.

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